Tuesday, October 27, 2015

0830 - 0845: Conference Opening and Welcome

The CASRAI Board and National Committee in Canada kick-off the conference and welcome attendees.

0845 - 0930: KEYNOTE: The Power of Infrastructures and the Infrastructures of Power

Cameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. The broad trends in the research enterprise are often described as increasing globalisation, collaboration, participation and modes of communication. It is the advent of the web and the infrastructure that it provides that is driving these changes, but we rarely consider the infrastructure itself. What drives researchers is edge cases and frontiers, but what changes our collective capabilities are the institutions, services and standards that we hold in common – in most researchers’ terms “the boring stuff”. I will argue that it is precisely the services, standards and institutions that are most “boring” that the community as a whole needs to care about. We need to develop agreed principles of governance and sustainability to support trustworthy institutions. But although “something must be done” we also need to build in a commitment to inclusion if we are to achieve truly a truly global, collaborative and participative research enterprise. Support for global research infrastructures and institutions will drive a more effective global research effort. But these institutions must be built in a way that enables scholars from the whole world to engage on their own terms. We must avoid utilising the power that effective infrastructures can provide to perpetuate the imbalance of historical power in our research enterprise.

0930 - 1000: CASRAI - A Year in Review

David Baker, CASRAI Executive Director. This session will set the stage for the next two days by covering key highlights in CASRAI activities world-wide since the last Reconnect conference in 2014.

1000 - 1030: Networking Break

Refreshments and a chance to connect with other delegates and speakers.

1030 - 1200: BREAKOUT 1A - Admin Burden in Canada

Launching the Admin Burden in Canada (ABC) Partnership Initiative - Janet Halliwell and David Baker. CASRAI introduces a new initiative to support and inform efforts at Industry Canada and the funding agencies to achieve a tangible reduction in the adverse impacts of research administration burden in the Canadian research ecosystem. The end goal is to allow researchers to spend more time on research. This collaborative project will focus on the various issues that contribute to undue administrative burden in the various research management processes shared between the research-performing and the research-funding sectors in Canada. The participating organizations will partner with Industry Canada and with the federal agencies in initiatives to reduce undue burden in related federal programs and identify institutional processes that could be streamlined.

ABC Example: Money makes the world go round - Judith Chadwick and Bob Dirstein. Money, money, money - Did I get it or didn’t I? What do I need to do to get it and how soon can I get it? The CASRAI standard for the announcement of competition results lays the groundwork to allow administrators to answer these questions, sooner, with less work and more accurately – all before love flies out the door.

1030 - 1200: BREAKOUT 1B - Research Data Management in Canada

Chuck Humphrey, Kathleen Shearer, Jeff Moon. Billions of dollars are invested each year in research, an investment that generates vast and diverse amounts of research data. If properly managed, these data have virtually limitless potential to be re-used in innovative ways. Sound research data management (RDM) practices, with due respect for confidentiality and intellectual property, accelerate scientific progress by allowing researchers to access and re-use others' data for their own scientific purposes, thereby adding value to those data and speeding up the rate of new discoveries. It also leads to efficiencies by preventing duplication in data creation, and enables greater transparency and verification of research findings. The federal government has recently published Canada's Action Plan on Open Government 2014-16, which contains a section on Open Science that includes deliverables on open access to publications and data resulting from federally funded scientific activities. It also calls for the development and adoption of policies, guidelines and tools to support effective stewardship of scientific data. In addition, the Tri-Councils have made public a draft Statement of Principles for Digital Data Management. Simultaneously, there are significant efforts to develop services and infrastructure that support RDM in Canada. This session will discuss the evolving context and landscape of research data management and present an update on the status of Portage, an initiative of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) to create a library-based research data management network in Canada. The session will also present a demonstration of one of the first major outputs of Portage: a national, bilingual, online tool for creating data management plans that is available to all researchers in Canada.

1200 - 1300: Lunch

Those delegates registered for workshops will have a buffet lunch before the main conference program starts in the afternoon.

Get an overview of all CASRAI standards projects from the past year delivered by the project leads. Includes Project CRediT, Peer Review Citations, Snowball Metrics, Data Management Plans, Open Access Reporting and Organizational ID standards.

Thorsten Hoellrigl, Thomas Vestam. Targeted at representatives of IT departments and software suppliers. Hearing from early technology adopters of CASRAI standards on progress and lessons learned.

1430 - 1500: Networking Break

Refreshments and a chance to connect with other delegates and speakers.

1500 - 1600: BREAKOUT 3A - Solutions In Action

Queen’s University is implementing an electronic tool comprising a self-serve CV that will integrate with the CCV - Karina McInnis. Researchers’ CV data will also be used to generate reports such as Annual Performance Reports, Research Tenure and Promotion applications, and quality assurance reporting. We are also looking at how this system can assist in Open Access compliance; there will be an article deposit linking capability to our library’s institutional repository.

Data standardization within a research information system framework - Steve Revucky. Take a closer look at Converis, a current research information system (CRIS) that supports not only institutional needs of faculty profiles and research management, but also integrates beyond the institution to the wider world. Learn how Converis has already adopted CASRAI and other standards within its data definitions, and hear about future integration plans between CASRAI and Converis.

1500 - 1600: BREAKOUT 3B - Solutions In Action

Outputs in the Open - the SHARE initiative - Judy Ruttenberg and Rebecca Kennison. In Phase II of SHARE, expanding the number of sources providing data to SHARE and enhancing the dataset, the project is looking deeply into several research institutions to see how various streams of administrative data can be integrated into SHARE for the purposes of that enhancement. These investigations will cover policies about using and sharing administrative data, the systems and workflows the institutions employ to exchange it currently, and how SHARE Notify and enhanced metadata might be integrated. Presenters will engage the audience in ways that SHARE can use and contribute to the CASRAI data dictionary in this phase of its work.

Research Metadata Mechanics - Simon Porter. Over the past 10 years, research systems have evolved from systems that focused on how to structure and record information on research, to systems capable of allowing significant insights to be derived based upon years of high quality information. In 2015, the maturity of the information now collected within many Current Research Information Systems, and the insights that this can provide is of equal or greater value than the insights that could be gleaned from established externally provided research metrics platforms alone. The ability to intersect these external and internal worlds provides new levels of strategic insight not previously available. With the addition of platforms that track altmetrics, and their ability to connect university publications data with a constant flow of real time attention level metrics, an image of a dynamic network of systems emerges, connected together by ever turning ‘cogs’ pushing and translating information. Add to this, the success of ORCID as pervasive researcher identifier infrastructure, and CASRAI as the emerging social contract for information exchange, and it becomes possible to extend this network back from the systems that track and record research information, through to the platforms through which research knowledge is created. The ‘Mechanics’ of this network of systems is more than just getting the ‘plumbing’ right. As research information moves through the network, its audience and purpose changes, the requirements for contextual metadata can also change. This presentation will explore the lived experience of Research Data Mechanics at Digital Science though illustrating how connections between Figshare, Altmetric, Symplectic Elements, and Dimensions can both enhance research system capability and reduce the burden on researchers, and research administration.

1500 - 1600: BREAKOUT 3C - Solutions In Action

Babel and Bungee: A New Take on the Tower - Claire Austin. Research data management needs a new language - Really?! This talk takes you on a HumourUs dive into RDC's new transdisciplinary glossary for research data management hosted in the CASRAI interactive dictionary. Researchers, IT people, and policy makers get down to business and talk shop in the pub.

1600 - 1630: Closing Day 1

Attendees regroup to hear brief reports from the day and updates about the social evening and the Day 2 program.

Evening Social Event

Social Evening: Reception/Food/Comedy. The Second City will be presenting the Fall ’15 Mainstage Revue. The cast will nobly carry on the tradition of boundary-breaking, cutting-edge comedy. Filled with hilarious original sketches and songs performed by Toronto’s legendary comedy troupe, the show promises to deliver uncontrollable bouts of gut-churning, tear-inducing laughter.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

0830 - 0845: Day 2 Opening Remarks

A brief welcome to day 2 and some info updates for the day.

0845 - 0930: KEYNOTE: The Digital Academia Power Struggle

Mark Hahnel, Figshare Founder. According to the Scholarly Kitchen Chefs, one of the things to have the biggest impact on scholarly publishing in 2015 is the publication of data and objects (like multimedia, application code). While we have seen the launch of ‘data journals’ from the like of Elsevier and Nature in the past 12 months, we have also seen the pressure from funders for institutions to be better managing the digital products of research carried within their walls. Funders are increasingly requiring grantees to deposit their raw research data in appropriate public archives or stores in order to facilitate the validation of results and further work by other researchers. According to the JISC and RLUK funded Sherpa Juliet site, globally there are now 34 funders who require data archiving and 16 who encourage it. So are we on course for a collision between publishers and institutions over who has control over the digital products of research? Previous attempts by institutions to retake control of printed scholarly output through institutional repositories have been beneficial, but have not stemmed the profit margins or reach of the big publishers. This is mainly due to the culture of academia, where for 350 years papers have been the currency and for the last 50, impact factor has been the value. The recent influx of digital-based data and other outputs is, however, creating a culture shift. This session will explore how the web enabled world of multiple digital outputs is playing out and predict what could happen in the next 12-60 months. Either way, it’ll be an interesting journey!

0930 - 1000: CASRAI - Governance Report

Janet Halliwell and Krista Connell. This session will provide a brief update on current governance renewal at CASRAI in general and in the Canadian chapter specifically.

1000 - 1030: Networking Break

Refreshments and a chance to connect with other delegates and speakers.

1030 - 1200: Detailed Reports from 2015 Standards Work

CRediT – Honey, do I look good wearing this new standard? - Richard Wynne. Somebody worked hard to tailor a new standard, but how well does it fit when we try it on a real system? CRediT (an emerging standard for identifying scholarly manuscript contribution) can potentially address chronic problems in research workflow, but what are the practical implications of implementing such a standard in software? It should be “easy” to add a list of options – right? In this presentation, Richard Wynne will address the practical software issues arising from integrating CRediT into Editorial Manager®, an online submission and peer review system used by more than 6,500 scholarly journals to process millions of submissions per year. This presentation will give you a clear picture of the benefits of CRediT and what issues to consider during its adoption.

UK Pilot on Open Access Reporting, Data Management Plans, Organizational IDs - Balviar Notay. This talk will provide an overview of the 2015 pilot of CASRAI in the UK. Three topics were piloted. (1) Data Management Plans - Developing an initial standard information agreement reflecting the current version of the Digital Curation Centre’s “DMP-Online” tool and concurrently, developing a potential further version of the standard information agreement derived from harmonization and discussions among the UK Research Councils. (2) Organisational Lists - Exploring possible sources of authoritative lists of organisations involved in UK research, including research performing organisations, charities, industry, etc. and developing a sustainable process for maintaining authoritative lists of organisations in the CASRAI dictionary. Assessment and recommendation on the suitability of the planned FundRef list for adoption as a standard authoritative list for international funding organizations. (3) Open Access Reporting - Information agreement supporting institutional report to UK funders for the new policy on Open Access.

Snowball Metrics as Standard Information Agreements - Anna Clements and Peter Darroch. Snowball Metrics aim to become the international standard that is endorsed by research-intensive universities so that they can build and monitor the most effective strategies. It is a “bottom-up”, or sector-led, initiative in which universities themselves agree a single method to calculate metrics about their own performance so that they can compare themselves against each other in an apples-to-apples way. This enables them to benchmark and understand their strengths and weaknesses to help to decide in which areas to invest, and in which to divest.

1200 - 1300: Networking Lunch

Those delegates registered for workshops will have a buffet lunch before the main conference program starts in the afternoon.

1300 - 1430: BREAKOUT 4A - How Do I Know Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

A set of panels of subject expert talks on the risks & benefits of systematically classifying the inputs, outputs and impacts of research investment.

Panel 1: Renata Osika, Ashlea Higgs - Organizations need and develop research classification schemas for many different reasons. Our presentation will help to illustrate why it is a lot easier to start with the agreement on the primary purpose for the classification. With this starting point in mind purpose drives the scope and usability of any schema, and promotes broader harmonization and sustainability. We will share from the collective experience the top things to keep in mind when defining purpose. An specifically we will look at how understanding the collective needs of the National Alliance of Provincial Health Research Organizations (NAPHRO) continue to help us reach consensus and help decision makers see investments in health research through consistent lens.

Panel 2: Jeffrey Alexander & Patrick Lambe - All R&D organizations classify their research activities, either implicitly (e.g., by laboratory or department) or explicitly (e.g., by creating taxonomies to define and map research disciplines and domains). However the lack of clear standards for doing so impedes the sharing and aggregation of data on R&D activities. In this panel the speakers will provide an overview of the organizational needs driving the development of a classification of R&D activities, use cases for such a classification, and the potential advantages of international coordination across such classifications.

Panel 3: Sarah Moreault, Monica Valsangkar-Smyth - Classification of research plays an integral role in the functioning of research funding organizations. As such it is important to have a classification system for efficient research data collection, use, analysis and reporting. Hear about lessons learned as well as key limitations and challenges for the implementation of a standard approach to classification through the analyses of different international standards currently in use with respect to their governance, development, implementation and maintenance

Eddy Nason, Renata Osika, Krista Connell, Allison Barr When we say “Research Impact” many things come to mind and the reasons for why we are concerned with it vary. The underlying concepts are complex and often require expert knowledge, and there is also no one single interpretation or answer. Stakeholders are diverse and so are the means of communication. Therefore across Canada, we continue to seek more consistent and harmonized ways of telling the “Impact Story.” The panel will reflect on harmonization efforts across provinces.

1430 - 1500: Networking Break

Refreshments and a chance to connect with other delegates and speakers.

All R&D organizations classify their research activities, either implicitly (e.g., by laboratory or department) or explicitly (e.g., by creating taxonomies to define and map research disciplines and domains). However the lack of clear standards for doing so impedes the sharing and aggregation of data on R&D activities. In this workshop, Jeff Alexander and Patrick Lambe will provide an overview of the organizational needs driving the development of a classification of R&D activities, use cases for such a classification, and the potential advantages of international coordination across such classifications. The workshop, based heavily on a study they conducted for the National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics at the U.S. National Science Foundation, will review alternate approaches to both developing R&D classifications, and streamlining the process of classifying research programs and projects. Topics to be covered include examples of international R&D classifications and their development (such as the Australia-New Zealand Standard Research Classification), design principles for R&D classifications, and new automated and semi-automated classification techniques using semantic analysis and machine learning.

1500 - 1700: WORKSHOP 5B - CASRAI Methodology 101

David Baker, Anna Clements, Thorsten Hoellrigl, Thomas Vestam. This session will introduce how CASRAI Interest Groups and Working groups share a common approach to collaboratively developing, maintaining and implementing the standard information agreements that are core to the CASRAI mission.